El Niño certainly gave us all we could handle this winter and some superintendents had plenty to worry about with decreased turfgrass density and suboptimal golf course conditions during their prime playing season. Managing the turf issues is one thing, and better weather will certainly help a lot, but managing the message to your golfers is another challenge entirely. Here are some strategies you can use to explain a reduction in golf course quality or increased expenditures that occurred during or after this extremely difficult winter.
To start, it wouldn’t hurt to send interested parties some pertinent articles, blog posts or videos about the impact El Niño had on Southern courses to explain what occurred and the methods used to mitigate the damage. There are certainly a number of sources out there and one or more will likely address your specific situation. This opens up a discussion about the challenges your course faced and why you did what you did from an agronomic standpoint.
If you went over budget on fungicides or herbicides and you are catching some heat for it, refer to sources that explained why fungicide programs that worked last year were not as effective during the extremely cloudy and rainy winter. Preemergence herbicides also had a hard time controlling weeds due to wetter soils that tended to break down the products and reduce efficacy. When this occurs, the first thing you typically want to do is treat any weed outbreaks before they become a bigger issue, which explains an increase in herbicide costs.
Regardless of the challenges you may have encountered over the winter, it should be well understood among all parties that this Super El Niño was difficult for everyone in the region and particularly challenging for those that didn’t raise mowing heights to preserve turf health. It would be beneficial to invite decision-makers and key stakeholders at your course to check out educational resources like this recent GCSAA webinar about El Niño, or to attend a seminar on the topic like the one the USGA Green Section recently hosted at Longboat Key Club in Florida.
If you’d like more resources to share with golfers or want to discuss what happened this winter and how to be better prepared for the next El Niño, please reach out to your USGA regional agronomist.
Southeast Region Agronomists:
Chris Hartwiger, director, Agronomy – chartwiger@usga.org
Jordan Booth, Ph.D., senior director, USGA Course Consulting Service – jbooth@usga.org
John Rowland, Ph.D., agronomist – jrowland@usga.org
Chris Neff, agronomist – cneff@usga.org